6z8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



in time begin to walk without instruction. The efforts of walking, 

 standing, and sitting can not be ascribed to any knowledge of the ad- 

 vantage of those actions. They rather arise from the growing power 

 of the will in connection with the muscles and motor nerves, bring- 

 ing those organs into the modes of action which will prove in later 

 life to be of most advantage to the body, just as has regularly hap- 

 pened to our ancestors. So deeply have the traces of these motive 

 impulses been impressed, so often has the will gone on these nerve- 

 paths and no others, that they are followed at once as soon as the mo- 

 tive impulses of the new-born man are developed. In other words, 

 the efforts are instinctive. The child walks when the inclination to 

 change place is so strong that creeping does not satisfy it, or when it 

 wills to walk, as it sits up or stands when its will to do so is strong 

 enough to command the requisite muscular action. A child observed 

 by me, which could already stand well, all at once, at the end of the 

 fifth quarter-year, for the first time ran around a table, unsteadily, like 

 a drunken man, but without falling. From that day on it went erect, 

 at first hurriedly, then trotting with extended arms, as if to keep from 

 falling, then slower and more firmly. In the course of the next month 

 it went over a door-sill an inch high between two rooms, but holding 

 on to something, and frequently lifting its foot up too high or stamp- 

 ing it down, like one afflicted with a spinal disease. Its will had not 

 yet full control of its muscles, and it could not measure the force of 

 its efforts. 



The movements of grasping afford interesting objects of obser- 

 vation. Their development has to be watched with care, for it some- 

 times takes place at a bound from a lower to a higher degree ; at 

 others, proceeds very slowly. A pencil put in the little hand was 

 clasped by the fingers during the first quarter-year ; the thumb partici- 

 pated in the action, but not independently rather as if it were one of 

 the fingers and the infant did not seem to be aware that it had any- 

 thing in its hand, holding the object mechanically, as it were. If, at 

 this time, one puts his finger into the child's hand, it will seem to grasp 

 it and hold it, the more so as it keeps a tight hold when the finger is 

 moved back and forth. The action is, however, wholly reflex ; there 

 is no intended grasping. The first real effort to take hold of an object 

 was observed in the seventeenth week, when the infant reached after a 

 little India-rubber ball which was near it. When the ball was put into 

 its hand it held it tight for a long time, brought it to its mouth, held 

 it close before its eyes, and looked at it with a peculiar, novel, intel- 

 ligent expression. On the next day it made many awkward but ear- 

 nest attempts to take hold of objects of all kinds which were presented 

 before it, fixing its eyes fast upon them, and reaching after things 

 which were too far for it to seize. On the following day, it seemed 

 to give it pleasure to take hold again and again of everything which 

 was within its reach. Wonder was -also mingled with its pleasure, and 



